| The Great Glen Way | |
|
|
|
|
Bacon, eggs and real estate ....
I came downstairs to find the American lady in the lobby telling her husband about a dream that had convinced her the place was haunted. He appeared to be receiving this information with the limited engagement of a man who has heard similar theories about many previous establishments and has developed a position. She was clearly enjoying the idea, which I could understand — if you're going to stay somewhere in Scotland and decide it's haunted, a solid Victorian granite house in the Highlands is a more convincing candidate than most. She spotted me on the stairs, stopped, beckoned, and said *"Come on down!"* with the enthusiasm of an game show host.
Bod, immediately behind me, suggested afterwards that the correct response would have been to dash down the stairs with arms waving and the uninhibited joy of a Price Is Right contestant. I wish I had thought of it at the time.
Breakfast earned an 8.4 under the Patent Pending Rating System, elevated by a pleasant conversation with our host, who had moved to Fort Augustus from the Midlands twenty years earlier with no prior experience of running a guest house and no apparent regrets about either decision. He was informative about the Scottish property purchasing process, which differs from the English system in ways that reward decisiveness and cash. The essential principle, as far as I understood it, was to have your finances in order and to flatter the vendor shamelessly. I found this refreshingly direct by comparison with the English alternative.
It was, I am fairly certain, this morning that Colin's nutritional resolve finally broke. He converted to the full fry-up without ceremony and maintained this position for the remainder of the week. I said nothing. I had been expecting it.
Foot therapy was, for once, a brief and cheerful business. My feet were blister-free — genuinely, verifiably blister-free — for the first time since I began walking long distances. I attributed this to the duct tape from the Fort William lady and I remain convinced she was right. Peeling it off at the end of each day was a compound experience involving pain and an almost unbearably ticklish sensation in roughly equal measure, but the result spoke for itself. Duct tape: essential kit. I have added it to the permanent list.
Whole lotta loch ....
We walked back through Fort Augustus, past The Bothie, along a residential road and turned east into forest. The first real climb of the week presented itself — modest by any standard we had previously encountered, but welcome after the largely flat days along the canal, and we went at it with the enthusiasm of people who have been slightly underused. We left Fort Augustus below us and broke through the treeline onto a headland above Loch Ness.
It was our first proper view of the famous loch, and it earned the pause we gave it. The long undulating ridge of mountains on the far shore. The steely blue of the water. The forest falling away below. The particular silence of a large Highland loch on a still morning — not the absence of sound exactly, but a quality of quiet that feels considered rather than accidental.
 |
|
Loch Ness |
He scanned the far shore as we walked, looking for Boleskine House, — the property once owned by Aleistair Crowley and subsequently acquired by Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin who purchased it at the height of his interest in the occult, presumably regarding a house in which Crowley was reputed to have summoned Satan as a selling point rather than a caveat. Two large properties were visible on the distant shore, plausible candidates at that distance. Bod dismissed them with the conviction of a man who’s faith in maps is unshakeable.
[ED: The house is actually at Foyers, some twenty miles further along the shore].
The track wound in and out of forest, the gaps between the trees allowing Loch Ness to appear and disappear in the manner of something that knows it is being looked for and is in no hurry to cooperate. When the trees grew tall enough to form cathedral aisles — great old pines throwing dappled light downward and holding the loch as a backdrop — the walking became as close to perfect as a day’s hiking could be.
We stopped at a vantage point. I filmed Bod and Colin photographing the loch. The silence held. Then Bod looked at his camera.
"It keeps focusing in on that f*ck*ng tree!" he said.
The ambience dispersed. We moved on.
Under Murkwood ....
After a brief lunch the track climbed higher above the loch, and the character of the walking changed. Waterfalls appeared at intervals — some delicate, threading down through the rocks in thin silver lines, others substantial enough to send spray across the path and require a certain commitment of pace to get through dry. Bod and I attempted Poohsticks
 |
|
Colin and Bod admire the forest |
The A82, far below, had been reduced to a pale thread following the loch shore, and from this height it was possible to observe a certain approach to driving that the road appeared to encourage. Motorcyclists in particular were threading through the corners with a confidence that the statistics, as the locals later explained, did not entirely support. The road collects fatalities at a dependable rate each year — many of them overseas bikers drawn to the Highlands by the promise of challenging roads and limited enforcement. I was reminded of the young German motorcyclist killed on the road through Glencoe during the West Highland Way, and the strange proximity of that kind of news to the ordinary business of a fine afternoon's walking.
The forest deepened and quietened. Pine trees grew close together, their canopy shutting out the light until the floor was in permanent semi-darkness — thick with needles, bare of undergrowth, silent of birds. Nothing takes hold in those conditions: no moss, no fern, no reason for wildlife to linger. A section of forest had burned — two acres or more of it, stumps like charcoal stubs, a few scorched survivors standing exposed among the wreckage.
 |
|
Another fantastic view of Ness |
A little further on, Colin had diverted from the track and was following the ghost of an old logging road — visible only as a mossy green line cutting through the trees — with the instincts of a man who notices these things. I followed him in. Under the full canopy the light dropped further, the trunks crowded together, the pine needle carpet muffled every footstep. Nothing grew there, not even moss. The silence was not peaceful so much as absolute, the word *Stygian* arriving in my head and fitting the situation with considerable accuracy. It was not a place I would have wanted to find myself in after dark. When I stepped back out onto the track the change was striking — bright autumn sunshine, birdsong, the world in full colour — and the two environments were separated by no more than ten yards of trees. Two completely different worlds, sharing a boundary.
Falling trees, over falls, falling into a bar ....
We had been looking forward to today with particular warmth, it being the shortest walk of the week at eight miles. Eight miles. A gentle stroll by any reasonable definition, with time at the end of it to do very little at a comfortable pace. As we approached Invermoriston a Great Glen Way marker indicated a steep track descending to the right, beside which a notice had been fixed informing us that the track was closed due to *dangerously hanging trees* and requesting that we take the indicated two-mile uphill detour.
We read this notice carefully.
We took the downhill track.
Eight miles was eight miles, and we had made our plans accordingly. The trees in question leaned at various creative angles, supported by their neighbours, a few having already completed their journey to the ground in a mess of broken branches and exposed roots.
 |
|
Pleasant and easy walking |
The Falls were a complete surprise — one of those moments on a long walk where something appears around a corner that you were not expecting and is so good that you stop and simply admire it. The River Moriston thundered through the village over a series of enormous boulders in a sustained and joyful display of white water, all kinetic energy and spray and noise, while Thomas Telford's old stone bridge arched dramatically across the gorge above it. The trees on the gorge sides were just beginning to turn — yellows and browns moving into the green — and the whole arrangement had the quality of something that has been here a very long time and demanded attention as its birthright.
By comparison, the village itself was modest — a hotel, a shop, a straggle of houses arranged around the waterfall like an afterthought. A hamlet, really, or a spectacular natural feature with some accommodation attached. But the hotel bar was open, which was the material point, and our B&B was directly next door.
Nobody was home at the B&B. This resolved itself into the hotel bar within about thirty seconds, where we found a friendly local who wanted to talk about his travels around Scotland. He traced a finger down the map to Campbeltown, at the southern tip of Kintyre, and declared his intention to visit. *"I hear it's really nice,"* he said.
Bod and Colin looked at each other.
"Actually," said Colin, with the honesty of a man who has been there, "it's a bit of a dump."
Our new friend had retired at fifty-two — he mentioned the age several times during the conversation, as a man does when he considers it an achievement worth repeating — having concluded, at that point, that everything was paid for and the moment had therefore arrived. He had built himself a camper van and spent his time driving to remote parts of Scotland and parking wherever the land would accommodate him.
"So I just thought, 'stuff it'," he explained.
It sounded, all things considered, like a sound plan.
The landlady was home when we returned. She appeared to be managing several things at once, with limited success in all directions, so the welcome and orientation were somewhat abbreviated. Bod and I had the twin room adjacent to the laundry, where the washing machine was spinning with the vigour of something on a mission. I hoped it would finish before midnight. I grabbed forty minutes on the bed, leaving Bod to find the television and Colin to do whatever Colin does in these intervals.
|
|
Invermoriston falls |
The room was filled, floor to shelf, with scale models of Citroën 2CVs. Every surface, every windowsill. Someone in the household had developed this particular enthusiasm over a considerable period of time and had not been discouraged. I found it unexpectedly charming. It evoked, at a distance of some years, the memory of a guest house whose rooms were festooned with glassy-eyed porcelain clowns. The Citroëns were a considerable improvement.
Colin, I learned later, had been in real discomfort with his feet through much of the day and was beginning to privately question whether he would finish the walk. He gave no sign of this at the time. The cause, I suspected, was the same one that had almost ended my own walking on Offa's Dyke — old, trusted footwear that had quietly lost its supporting capacity while maintaining all the external evidence of reliability.
At the Glenmoriston Arms Hotel ....
As we prepared to head back to the Glenmoriston Arms Hotel for dinner I found myself on the doorstep talking to one of the other guests — a young woman of bohemian bearing, who turned out to be a member of the GGW Circus. The Circus had arrived. Several of them were staying at the B&B, and sure enough the cheerful Kiwi support operative appeared shortly afterward to check on her charges. We had been almost meeting these people for four days, and there they were.
The hotel had two dining areas: the posh room with linen tablecloths and a wine list designed for people with different financial arrangements than ours, and the informal room near the bar with wooden tables and a more accessible menu. We would have preferred the informal room. The Circus had booked it entirely. We were shown to the linen tablecloths and ordered from the expensive menu with the philosophical acceptance of people who have run out of alternatives. I had chicken stuffed with haggis, which is a more successful combination than it sounds.
We stayed on in the bar after dinner. A group of local musicians had set up and were playing a mixture of Celtic traditional and English folk — good music, well played. Mark and Carol were at the bar, and we stood with them through several more drinks than the impending morning would have preferred. A local man was conducting an extended and shamelessly optimistic campaign to interest two middle-aged women in his company, their husbands maintaining the fixed expressions of men who have concluded that acknowledgement would make things worse.
Bod left early, citing the stomach that had first announced itself at Chorley services a week ago and had been making intermittent returns. I watched him go with the specific concern of a man who was sharing his room.
The musicians, when I fell into conversation with them later, turned out to be mainly from Liverpool and the Midlands, with one actual Scottish person among them. They were amiable and interested and recommended a pub called the Lever in Drumnadrochit, promising a good night. Colin and I had a whisky with Mark and Carol and left later than was sensible, the rumble of the Moriston Falls accompanying the short walk back through the dark.
I hoped I would feel reasonable in the morning.
Daily Tweets
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
Today has us beginning the walk alongside Loch Ness, which will be our companion for the rest of the walking week.
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
Residual headache may, or may not, be in direct ratio to the ale consumed last night. Absurdly short walk of 8 miles today. This may be something to rejoice in later, since the sky looks very low & dish-rag grey. Rain is intermittent, but enthusiastic.
Twitter from @Darkfarmowl (Mark)
Walking along Loch Ness today. Stunning views and even some sunshine.
. Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
A short walk through pleasant woodland, overlooking Loch Ness; I've had worse days. We arrived early at Invermoriston, so had time to kill.
Twitter from @Corriepaw (Colin)
We've got familiar with a few other walkers over the week, mainly in bars during the evenings. Never seem to see them on the trail. Maybe we're the only silly buggers actually doing any walking. The rest of them are getting lifts to each town and B&B. I see the logic.
See Route on ......
|
|
|
|
|
Prev
Next
No comments:
Post a Comment